Technical Abstract:
Precision agriculture involves aspects of sensing, crop protection, field sampling, precision tillage and planting, fertilizer application, pest control, irrigation, on-the-go yield monitoring and other emerging applications. Site specific irrigation management (SSIM) focuses on the delivery of appropriate amounts of irrigation to specific areas within a field. This technology is a subset of precision agriculture and seeks to integrate specially designed irrigation machinery controlled by computer managed decision support systems using information from remote and in-situ sensors. The goals of SSIM are to improve crop water productivity and producer profitability by optimizing inputs, minimizing adverse impacts, and conserving water. This article examines the current and potential impact of SSIM on water use efficiency, explains the required essential sprinkler hardware, describes various technologies to supplement SSIM, and investigates some of the barriers to its adoption.